Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory; that's why they're fanatic.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. Interview by Mike Wallace. The Mike Wallace Interview, ABC, 27 Apr. 1958.
Ataturk was not receptive toward Communism as some other world leaders were at the time. He saw its weakness far earlier than many others.
Vladimir Lenin. Although Plekhanov was the intellectual giant of Russian communism, he died only two years into the revolution. He was never happy with some of the pragmatic compromises the younger firebrand communist leaders were making from their ideals. By the time he passed away, most, especially the younger, communist leaders like Stalin saw him as an old obstructionist and he was never celebrated as a hero by the communists. It was Lenin and older leaders like Trotsky who appreciated him. See {590462}.
Note that he proudly describes himself as a Marxist-Leninist, but distinguishes that from Communism—especially Russian Style communism.
See the Related Quotation for a good contemporary example of the clerics whop were party tools.
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. A public theologian, he wrote and spoke frequently about the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy, with his most influential books including Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man. The latter is ranked number 18 of the top 100 non-fiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library. Andrew Bacevich labelled Niebuhr's book The Irony of American History "the most important book ever written on U.S. foreign policy." The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described Niebuhr as "the most influential American theologian of the 20th century" and Time posthumously called Niebuhr "the greatest Protestant theologian in America since Jonathan Edwards."
